Help - Referrals are non existant

Hey,

I need help please.

I have had vBSEO for 3 months, 3 weeks after installing my referrals jumped to 2000 uniques a day which was great, but, over the last 2 months they have dropped to 100 or so.

So I'm back to where I started, and nothing I try seems to help.

I have lots of relevant incoming links, but my site seems to be 99% in the supplemental index and gets no traffic.

Whats interesting is I have 12,000 indexed pages but only 4000 in my sitemap, am I being penalised for duplicate content? Is Google still holding onto old pages before vBSEO?

Whats also weird is if i do "site:www.domain.com +vbseo" i get the same index count (12,000) so it would seem all my indexed pages are post vBSEO and are not old URLs. That is impossible if I only have 4000 URLs in my site. So what is Google indexing?

I desperately need someone to check my site over and make sure everything is setup correctly.

What am I doing wrong? Am I being penalised? Am I sand-boxed?

Arrrgggghhhhhh!

Thanks.

Dave.

Hello Dave ,

After last Pr update google probably changed all their algoritym's. My site also dropped from daily 2000 google referrals to 200~. But i also faced a 10 day downtime because of a server problem. Anyway my referrals are started to recover. Each day i can see some increase. Your numbers will 100% also increase.
You are using Relevant replacements however you didn't add <h1> tag to your Relevant Replacements. If you can paste them i can help you modify your Relevant Replacements.

Whats your thoughts on the amount of pages I have indexed, I have 3 times what I should?

I am also using h1 tags on breadcrumbs, should i used them on the RRs too?

What code do you need to add them?

I have been waiting 2 months for traffic to return and it just keeps going down day by day.

Thanks.

<h1> tag is a header tag and usually after headers there shall be a paragraph which is the description for the header.
What i use in my RR are
forumdisplay

Code:

<h2 class="h1">[bb_title] forumlarinda [forum_title] bolumu</h2><p class="smallfont" style="margin-top: -2px;">[forum_title] [forum_description]</p>

showthread

Code:

<h2 class="h1">[thread_title]</h2><p class="smallfont" style="margin-top: -2px;"><strong>[forum_title]</strong> icinde <em>[thread_title]</em> konusu , [first_post_30_words]...</p>

I also use h1 tag as my sitename. In showthread i also use h3 and h4 tags . First post of the thread has thread title <h3>Thread Title</h3> and rest of the posts have <h4>Re:Thread Title</h4> which will increase keyword relevancy for bots.
If you check bottom of the link you can see Outline of a showthread page i have. It shows the header tags i have.

Ok, ive made my RRs for forumdisplay and showthread h2.

Have I done it correctly?

Thank you!

Try this
Forumdisplay

Code:

<h2>This is the [forum_title]</h2><p class="smallfont" style="margin-top: -2px;">[forum_description]</p>

Showthread

Code:

<h2>This is a discussion on [forum_title]</h2><p class="smallfont" style="margin-top: -2px;">[first_post_X_words]</p>

This way you will have description for headers and description is really important.

Originally Posted by Mert Gökçeimam

Try this
Forumdisplay

Code:

<h2>This is the [forum_title]</h2><p class="smallfont" style="margin-top: -2px;">[forum_description]</p>

Showthread

Code:

<h2>This is a discussion on [forum_title]</h2><p class="smallfont" style="margin-top: -2px;">[forum_description]</p>

This way you will have description for headers and description is really important.

I don't understand, why not make the whole RR h2 rather than just part of it.

So you are saying remove the first post words from the showthread RR?

Because header shall have a description. Also iheader tags shall not be so long.

Originally Posted by Dave Hybrid

So you are saying remove the first post words from the showthread RR?

Corrected that

....................

Originally Posted by Mert Gökçeimam

Corrected that

Then the RRs don't read well.

I have made them h2 but i wont be changing the format.

I appreciate the advice, it may make a small difference but i don't think this is causing the lack of traffic.

Any other advice appreciated .....

Any chance some of you experts can give me some words of wisdom please.

Here are my referrals since day 1, steady increase then nowt.